19.4.11

Model Expo 2011

One more Model Expo has been experienced and my legs & feet are still complaining a bit. The main thing is that lots of fun was had, so I'll be there again next year. We'll see if I manage to build anything for the competition 2012, most likely on the last weekend. IPMSFi's section (International Plastic Modellers Society Finland, Imps from now on for simplicity) has always had one drawback that I've complained about: the lights are surprisingly dim so photos are somewhat difficult to take w/o a flash. And the infocards of some models are difficult to see because of the smallness and a couple of meters between you and them. For some reason I don't carry a set of binoculars with me :) In any case the models are generally awesome - I'm always so envious of people's skills.

Amongst the RC ships some silly person had built a silly thing:

Oh well, at least I was amused.

The missile boat was neat, too, even though I'm not a huge fan of ships in general:

To me one of the main things in the whole Expo is the Imps stand. Not that it's a stand per se but a big ring of tables covered in various scale models. This year it was confusingly sparsely populated: several tables were empty. I'll add a bunch of photos below, I didn't even try to take pics of all the categories because either it was too dim to get good photos or stuff reflected annoyingly.

Small-scale tracked vehicles

Bigger warmachines I

Bigger warmachines II

Planes

Planes II

Jets

Planes III

Tiny boats, with a mighty fine U-Boat

Revell's Bismarck

Some Star Wars -themed models. I even found my own silly attempt

A Sergei built by the infamous Komulainen

While I was cropping and downscaling the photos I tried to keep the notes completely in (where applicable), just in case someone could read them. It's bothersome to try to check what the paper says when it's halfway cut. But maybe that's just me, the rest of the hobbyists know everything already so they don't need to read :P

Someone from the RC people had built a confusingly cool Sturm (a finnish StuG), I had to stare at it for a good while with a confused expression on my face. Sadly I didn't see it driving around, I guess it was just posing and looking awesome. And collecting some trophies, of course.

Ps.531-4

The Armoured Guild that takes care of the museum in Parola had brought a real M2 halftrack to their stand. I had to take a bunch of closeups for reference, just in case. Obviously this clean setup doesn't show how awful that would look on the field but it's a real life example that I can look at when building this and that.

On Sunday morning I had a nice chat with the Risteysasema dyde, he's a nice guy. I was going to buy a replacement blade or to for my old and worn hobby knife but he had sold them all already. So I bought a new knife altogether. Oh and I also got a bit of brass tube for 'Mech modifications. That stuff could be really useful when building a bit better looking guns like the different variations of Autocannons or a Gauss gun. I know I'm weak. For a moment I pondered on buying a Panther kit but then I saw the Königstiger with an early production turret (the ones that are also called Porsche turrets). After I'm done with that I've built one of each interesting Tiger variation: a normal Tiger (can't remember which production model), a Sturmmörser Tiger, a Königstiger, a Jagdtiger, and this one.